I think that this probably applies widely and is a good reminder to interact well, especially with posts and people I appreciate (I think that I’ll try to send more PMs to people who I think are constantly writing well on the forum and may be under-appreciated).
Yeah, that sounds to me like it could be handy!
It also would’ve been useful (or at least comforting) if I’d known that, if I was doing badly and seemed to be a bad fit, I’d get a clear indication of that. (It’d obviously suck to hear it, but thenI could move on to other pursuits.) Otherwise it felt hard to update in either direction. But I think it’s much easier and less risky to just make it more likely that people would get clear indications when they are doing well than when they aren’t, for a wide range of reasons (including that even people who are capable of being great at something might not clearly display that capability right away).
Generally, though, it seems like you didn’t find engagement with the content itself very useful, which is about what I’d have guessed but unfortunate to hear.
I think I agree with what you mean, but that this phrasing give someone the wrong impression. I definitely appreciated the engagement that did occur, and often found it useful. The problems were more that:
Often there just wasn’t much engagement. Maybe like some upvotes, 0-1 downvotes, 0-4 short comments.
It’s very hard to distinguish “These 3 positive comments are from the 3 out of (let’s say) 25 readers who had an unusually positive opinion about this or want to be welcoming, and the others thought this sort-of sucked but couldn’t be bothered saying so or didn’t want to be mean” from “These 3 positive comments are totally sincere, and the other (let’s say) 22 readers also thought this was great but didn’t bother commenting or felt it’d be weird to just comment ‘this is great!’ without saying more”
And that’s not the fault of those 3 commenters. And it would feel harsh to say it’s the fault of the (perhaps imagined) other 22 readers either.
(btw, reminding you to link to this comment from here)
Yeah, that sounds to me like it could be handy!
It also would’ve been useful (or at least comforting) if I’d known that, if I was doing badly and seemed to be a bad fit, I’d get a clear indication of that. (It’d obviously suck to hear it, but thenI could move on to other pursuits.) Otherwise it felt hard to update in either direction. But I think it’s much easier and less risky to just make it more likely that people would get clear indications when they are doing well than when they aren’t, for a wide range of reasons (including that even people who are capable of being great at something might not clearly display that capability right away).
I think I agree with what you mean, but that this phrasing give someone the wrong impression. I definitely appreciated the engagement that did occur, and often found it useful. The problems were more that:
Often there just wasn’t much engagement. Maybe like some upvotes, 0-1 downvotes, 0-4 short comments.
It’s very hard to distinguish “These 3 positive comments are from the 3 out of (let’s say) 25 readers who had an unusually positive opinion about this or want to be welcoming, and the others thought this sort-of sucked but couldn’t be bothered saying so or didn’t want to be mean” from “These 3 positive comments are totally sincere, and the other (let’s say) 22 readers also thought this was great but didn’t bother commenting or felt it’d be weird to just comment ‘this is great!’ without saying more”
And that’s not the fault of those 3 commenters. And it would feel harsh to say it’s the fault of the (perhaps imagined) other 22 readers either.
Thanks! Done.